Author Topic: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)  (Read 4077 times)

Offline x4000

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The latest beta is available via the Updates window in version 3.000 or greater of the game.  Just open the game and you can quickly download the prerelease through the updates tab.  If you don't yet have 3.000 or greater, you can download 3.000 here.  This prerelease version is compatible with any vendor's version of the game -- Steam, Impulse, whatever.

Note:  If you have bug reports related to this release, please log them in the bug reports subforum with one bug per topic.  It makes things infinitely easier for us.  Thanks!

Looking for a Patch That Can Be Manually-Installed?
Because of the time involved in creating multiple versions of each patch, we only create manually-installable patches for official versions of the game, not each beta prerelease.  But, if you're running version 3.022 of the game or higher, you can easily create your own manually-installable beta patch!  If you don't yet have 3.022, but do have 3.000 or greater, you can download a simple zip containing the files of 3.022 here.  Simply unpack those on top of your existing files in your AI War folder, and voila -- you're on 3.022.

To create your own manual beta patch, you'll want to go here.  This folder contains all of the beta updates.  You just need whatever the most recent one is at the time (probably the same version number as this post).  Download that zip file, which if you try to open will say it's corrupt -- that's okay, it's not really a zip file.  Next download the updated Director.Xml file from that folder.  Finally create a new zip file on your computer, and put both the director and the fake-zip-file inside it.  Call your outer zip file something that starts with Beta and ends with an extension of .zip.  Beta.zip will work just fine, or you can name it after the specific version number if you want to hang onto it.  And that's it!  Now you have your very own manually-installable package of the AI War beta version of your choice, which you can install by simply selecting via your Updates window in the game.

What's new since 3.043:
(Cumulative release notes since 3.000 are attached at the bottom)

-------------------

-(From 3.043: Transports now move vastly faster, have almost doubled shields, have 10x more health, and cost 2x as much crystal.)

-Transports are no longer of a higher priority than any other ships.

-Ships that are placed into cold storage are no longer removed and re-added to their planet's secondary rollups (they are just kept in those rollups the entire time).  This removes the lag at the start of games from ships going into cold storage, as well as about all of the lag when ships are coming into and out of planets that are in cold storage.  This makes transports that are traveling through many large planets that are in cold storage no longer cause the game to repeatedly hitch for about 2 seconds every time they enter or leave the planets of that sort, while still keeping practically all the benefits of cold storage itself.

-Solving one of the more annoying pockets of micromanagement of the game, manufactories now auto-optimize their on/off states to keep resources flows as positive as possible (assuming there is enough free energy to turn them on).

-A new control node has been added to disable the new auto-management of manufactories, so that players can continue to manually manage them as before

-modified the "don't chase teleporting units" code to prevent a problem causing human player ships in FRD mode to do nothing because they were constantly picking a teleporting target and dropping it again.

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======

-changed name of "Remains Rebuilders" unit to "Remains Rebuilder".

-Modular ships (just the Riots, right now) now properly flag their build queues as non-assistable when they don't contain any queue items that are currently buildable (i.e. queued modules with no hardpoint to fit on).

-Engineers can now assist an MRS's build queue.

-Made planetary shield booster description clearer.

-Modified evade-at-wormhole-end logic so that ONLY the following ships use this behavior: Scout I-IV, Scout Starship.

-Cloaking boosters now boost ships not in low-power-mode before ships in low-power-mode.

-Fixed the ship mark icons on the tachyon beam emitters.

-A better-looking small explosion effect (for shot hits) has been added by Hans-Martin Portmann.

CHANGES TO PAST PRERELEASES
=======

-Made Marauders and Resistance Fighters able to damage guard posts and command stations again, since they are much less likely to trigger an early "wave" of high-mark AI units against the players.

-SpiderIV's brought back down to previous stats, but engine damage buffed a fair bit to maintain progression from II to III to IV.

-If the player has a very low store of a resource, the game will no longer automatically turn on manfuactories to convert away from that resource even if the outflow of that resource is the lower of the two.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #1 on: February 23, 2010, 01:04:35 pm »
I will also add that our current goal is to do an official release tomorrow.  So, final bugfixes and tweaks to be today, ideally, and then whatever is left over is simply going to be for after this next official release.  We're not down to a zero bug count (we never are, it seems), but we're down to the point where all the critical ones that we know about seem to be handled, and a lot of the others are really edge cases, or specific strangeness that is taking longer to hunt down, or something along those lines.
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Offline Buttons840

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #2 on: February 23, 2010, 07:26:03 pm »
What is cold storage.  I missed that in the notes I guess?

Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #3 on: February 23, 2010, 07:43:46 pm »
What is cold storage.  I missed that in the notes I guess?

It's an efficiency improvement, it doesn't affect gameplay (or isn't supposed to).  If you do a search in the full release notes attached above, you'll see a full description in there somewhere.
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Offline SgtScum

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #4 on: February 23, 2010, 11:06:36 pm »
An official release!?! Finally I can finish a game! \o/

"-Engineers can now assist an MRS's build queue."

Zomg ty.

Offline quickstix

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #5 on: February 24, 2010, 01:37:06 am »
Given it a good couple of hours. Everything seems pretty good and stable, most things seem to be working. I'll probably test out a few specific things later, but for the most part I think it's just about ready to go.

As a side note, since upgrading to 3.050 and 3.051 I haven't seen or been able to reproduce the targeting and rebuilding issues I reported for 3.049. Either they're rather rare, or they've been resolved.

Finally, thanks for the clarifications on the shield booster/inhibitor capturables. Funny it wasn't until I landed an AI using them on every single planet before I got a bit muddled up. Thanks!

Offline Ozymandiaz

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #6 on: February 24, 2010, 03:19:59 am »
Seems like the wierd bug I had (seeminlgy only) went away as well. Planet unit count is functioning when I load my games again.
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Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #7 on: February 24, 2010, 08:40:58 am »
Interesting! Three phantom bigs gone; maybe that was something Keith did, I'm not sure. Well, glad it's looking clean!
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Offline vonduus

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #8 on: February 24, 2010, 03:24:53 pm »
I almost forgot: The new Riot line is just wonderful, I really like the way the preconfigs and the free modularity is designed. Thanks a lot.
If you miss the alert, you die. If you get the alert, you die. Summa summarum: You die. (Kierkegaard on CPAs)

Offline I-KP

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #9 on: February 24, 2010, 03:31:54 pm »
^ *two thumbs fresh*
Atmospheric & Lithospheric Reticulator,
Post-accretion Protoplanet Aesthetic Seeding Team,
Celestial Body Design & Procurement Division,
Magrathea Pan-Galactic Planets Corp.,
Magrathea.

Offline x4000

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #10 on: February 24, 2010, 03:33:27 pm »
You have Keith entirely to thank for that one -- other than creating the far zoom icon, I didn't do anything with it.  I think it is a really cool thing, too! :)
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Offline keith.lamothe

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #11 on: February 24, 2010, 05:22:33 pm »
On the Riot line, I guess I thought it would happen spontaneously, but I'd like suggestions on the pre-config loadouts, either modifying the existing 3 for each or adding 1 or 2 for each if there are any gaping holes in utility.

Thanks :)
Keith
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Offline CodeMichael

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #12 on: February 24, 2010, 07:31:08 pm »
So maybe this is answered elsewhere but I couldn't find it:
There seem to be a number of important changes in the current beta patch.  I'm as far back as 3.0.16 (that's the version steam has me on).  When is this patch likely to be "final" and what are your recommendations on updating in the meantime?

Offline Buttons840

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #13 on: February 24, 2010, 07:38:58 pm »
So is this an official release, or is that still coming?  What bug fixes are you expecting in the official patch?

Offline quickstix

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Re: Prerelease 3.051 (Bugfixes, balance tweaks, minor sound/gfx improvements)
« Reply #14 on: February 24, 2010, 08:09:56 pm »
So maybe this is answered elsewhere but I couldn't find it:
There seem to be a number of important changes in the current beta patch.  I'm as far back as 3.0.16 (that's the version steam has me on).  When is this patch likely to be "final" and what are your recommendations on updating in the meantime?

The latest beta is pretty stable. The ingame updater will always offer the latest beta, which is as of now 3.0.5.1. Just click on the Updates button on the main menu and you should be able to see the latest beta there. If for some reason you can't see it (I'm not sure what it's like on Steam), you can follow the directions at the top of the topic and install the patch manually.

So is this an official release, or is that still coming?  What bug fixes are you expecting in the official patch?

Still coming. However, the final prerelease before an official release is pretty much the same thing as the official one, it's just used to make sure it's completely stable before being released officially. I'd say there won't be too many new things between now and the official.

Those of you feeling impatient but don't install beta patches, give 3.051 a try. It might say beta, but its pretty stable.